Valentine
| running time = 96 min. | country = USA | language = English | budget = $29,000,000 | gross revenue = $20,384,136 $36,684,100 (Worldwide) | preceded by = | followed by = }}Valentine is an American horror film of the slasher subgenre. It was directed by Jamie Blanks and co-written by Donna Powers, Wayne Powers, Gretch J. Berg and Aaron Harberts. It was produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and presented by Village Roadshow Pictures. Valentine premiered in the United States on February 2nd, 2001 - two weeks before Valentine's Day. The film stars David Boreanaz, Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel and Katherine Heigl. Plot Junior High Torment The movie opens with a flashback to the year 1988. The setting is Robert F Kennedy Junior High School and it is the night of the Valentine's Day dance. A little buck-toothed nerd named Jeremy Melton is trying desperately to impress some of the female students. He asks four different girls to dance with him. Their names are Kate Davies, Paige Prescott, Lily Voight and Shelly Fisher. They all turn him down and he walks away. He finds an overweight girl named Dorothy Wheeler sitting on the bleachers by herself. He asks her to dance and Dorothy is so surprised that that she agrees. After dancing for a bit, the two decide to sneak underneath the bleachers to make out. As they begin to get intimate, a group of jocks finds them and begins harassing them. Dorothy would rather be dead than be caught in such an embarrassing situation, so she tells everyone that Jeremy attacked her. The jocks harass him further and dump a bowl of punch over his head. Then they drag him out onto the dance floor and proceed to beat him up. Revenge on Campus as Adam Carr.]] Thirteen years later we find Shelly Fisher (one of Jeremy's tormentors) on a date. She is with a man named Jason Marquette who has a penchant for talking in the third person. The date goes sour and Shelly returns to the med labs on the college campus where she works. While getting ready to carve up a cadaver named Chad, Shelly finds a Valentine's Day card. Opening it up, she finds a death threat worded within the couplet of a Valentine’s greeting. She goes back to her lab where the killer known as the Cherub is waiting. The strange murderer wears all black clothing and sports a plastic mask made to look like Cupid. Shelly tries to hide by slipping into an unoccupied body bag. The Cherub unzips the back and runs a sharpened silver blade across her throat. As he looks down upon her body, a stream of blood begins to pour from his nose. The following day we find Paige Prescott and Kate Davies going to a California dating service. They interview with a few men who represent every baseline stereotype ever established for a single libidinous male. Leaving the scene the two learn the shocking news of their friend's death. Several people attend Shelly's funeral including Paige's roommate Lily and Kate's boyfriend Adam Carr. Kate and Adam have a serious discussion concerning Adam's apparent drinking problem. They are interrupted by Detective Leon Vaughn. He passes around his business card and asks people to give contact him if they learn anything about the murder. Blood & Chocolate A few days later we see Paige and her roommate sitting around their apartment. Lily gets the mail and finds a Valentine's day card and a box of chocolates. She's not sure who the candy is actually for, but doesn't really seem to care either. She rips the box open anyway and tears into the candy. Much to her surprise the chocolates are filled with wriggling squirming maggots. She spits them onto the floor and then reads the card. It's another "Roses are Red" themed death threat signed by someone named JM. Meanwhile, Kate is taking a shower in her apartment. The water gets shut off and she is forced to rinse the shampoo out of her hair by dunking her head into the toilet. Kate goes to phone the superintendant when she sees that her front door is open. With her towel firmly wrapped around her body, Kate peers out into the hall. She hears a strange sound coming from the elevator. She goes to check it out and finds a weird plastic cherub mask lodged between the doors. She encounters her weird rhyming neighbor Gary, who makes her feel even more awkward. Over the past thirteen years, Dorothy Wheeler has dumped about eighty pounds and has dyed her hair blonde. She is also filthy rich and lives in a huge mansion. An old friend of Dorothy’s named Campbell Morris arrives at her door begging for a place to stay. Dorothy is attracted to the man and immediately gives him a room. Campbell is actually just a gold digger and is only interested in Dorothy's money. Elsewhere, Lily's boyfriend is an artist named Max who hosts a Bohemian film gallery. Paige, Kate, Dorothy, Adam and Campbell all attend and even Jason Marquette shows up. Lily and Max get into a fight later into the evening and Lily storms off. While wandering through a maze of video monitors beckoning her to "Love me", the Cherub arrives. He fires three shots from a bow and arrow, propelling Lily out the window into a garbage dumpster. The Cherub's nose begins bleeding again. The next day Dorothy confesses to her friends that she lied about Jeremy attacking her in Junior High. They all go down to the police station to talk with Detective Vaughn. They discuss the possibilities that Melton may be the killer. After everyone leaves, Vaughn tries to put the moves on Paige. Paige turns him down though. While all this is going on, we find that Kate's strange neighbor Gary has sneaked into her apartment to try on her panties. The Cherub enters the room and batters him with a hot iron. The following night, Dorothy prepares for her big Valentine's Day party. Campbell and she have sex and Dorothy goes to take a shower. The hot water turns off and she asks Campbell to go relight the pilot in the boiler. He goes down into the basement where the Cherub is waiting. He brandishes an axe and buries it between Campbell's shoulder blades and he falls over dead. Killer party With the coming of night, Dorothy's party is in full swing. One of the guys from Turbo-dating arrives and tries to romance Paige. They go upstairs and he blatantly petitions her for oral sex. More than a little offended, she ties him down to the bed and pours hot candle wax all over his body. After a few more unpleasant incidents, Paige decides to relax out in the Jacuzzi. In comes the Cherub. He pushes her down into the water and closes the lid. Paige scrambles about trying to escape and the killer begins drilling holes into the thing with a power drill that was left lying around. Before long, he finally manages to nail her and the water turns red with blood. He tosses the drill into the tub and Paige is electrocuted. Due to the extremity of Paige's demise, the power in the house goes out and everyone leaves. The only ones left are Adam, Dorothy, Kate, and Brian the candle wax man. Kate gets into an argument with Dorothy and runs outside. She finds Detective Vaughn's head floating in a fountain. Next to it is a note that belonged to her boyfriend, Adam. Kate runs back into the house convinced that Adam is the killer. But apparently Adam has been down in the wine cellar drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Adam and she talk back and forth and he appears to attack her. Kate runs and Adam chases after her. Finally, Kate begins to run upstairs when she runs smack-dab into... the Cherub. The Cherub falls upon her and the two tumble down the staircase. Both smash onto the floor and the Cherub appears to be knocked unconscious. Kate pants and breathes heavily before picking herself up. Just as she does so, the Cherub rises. Before the killer can do anything else however, Adam appears at the top of the staircase and plugs the Cherub with seven shots from a pistol. Kate pulls the mask off the corpse revealing the face of Dorothy Wheeler. Kate breaks down and Adam caresses her in a loving embrace. A drop of blood begins spilling out of his nose. Cast Notes & Trivia * The tagline to this film is "Remember that kid everyone ignored on Valentine's Day? - He remembers you". * Production on Valentine began on July 10th, 2000. Principal filming concluded on September 8th, 2000. The movie was shot entirely in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The setting however is San Francisco, California. * One of the ironies of the film is that Adam Carr wears the face of a cupid mask. A cupid is a type of angel. Actor David Boreanaz is best known for playing a character named Angel on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his own self-titled television series. * Caroline Chan, C. Ernst Harth and Marshall Virtue are all uncredited in this film. * Jamie Blanks is also known for directing the 1998 horror film Urban Legend. The year in film Other films that were released in 2001 include: External Links * * * Valentine at Wikipedia * * * References